The growth CIOLessons and strategies about leading during rapid growth

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Making growth work

Growth puts a lot of pressure on companies. There’s pressure on HR as the organizational culture changes and pressure on business units to deliver results.

For IT, the most significant source of pressure is operational – how do you scale up your resources, enhance efficiency and improve your effectiveness all at once?

This aspect of growth is challenging for a number of reasons:

– IT spend typically shrinks relative to the company’s growth.1 So IT has no choice but to do more with relatively less.

– The more other departments grow and evolve, the harder it becomes for IT to keep track of all workflows and processes.

– When the company’s growing fast, the flood of new requests means there’s hardly anytime to think about deep strategic issues.

It’s why IT leadership in a growing company is so different to IT leadership in established enterprises. Because when the company is growing fast, you aren’t just enabling existing processes. You’re overcoming the limitations of old, ad-hoc processes and simultaneously formalizing new ones.

Remember: for growth to work, your company needs processes, people and tech to work together.

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Everything you do is inherently strategic because you’re laying the scalable, flexible foundations for growth. You’re weaving the right processes into the very fabric of the company.

And if you get it right, you’re leading the transition from what the company used to be to what the company needs to be. It’s an incredibly challenging role. But we can’t think of anything more exciting.

But as you grow, all three get tested. The risks and inefficiencies in your ad-hoc processes get exposed. Your people have to rise to challenges and responsibilities they’ve never dealt with before. And the technology that worked so well when the company was small starts to reach its limits.

So if you’re running IT for a growing business, you’re part of an exhilarating ride – but you’re also facing some of the toughest operational challenges of your career (and in the company’s history).

Making growth work

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“Most high-growth businesses don’t allow CIOs time to mull over architecture decisions or to code the most flexible systems; when revenues are spiking upward, the demands on the IT group are immediate.”Derek Slater CIO.com2

Five strategies to make growth work better

“The demands from the business became a relentless waterfall. Or as my managers referred to it: ‘Drinking from the fire hose.’ The expectation was that we would deliver new applications and functionality every three weeks.”Tanni Graichen Former executive vice president of integrated card business and CIO at Providian2

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1Understand, formalize and document workflow

Small companies usually make processes up as new needs emerge. But during rapid growth, the risks and inefficiencies hiding in ad-hoc processes get exposed and slow everyone down. A degree of formalization is key.

Because when processes break and IT has to come in to help, it’s incredibly hard to know the root cause of the problem.

An example: finance is concerned by how long it takes to transmit invoices to accounts payable and they ask you to help.

On the surface, it’s hard to see what IT can do. Perhaps you could move some printers and scanners closer to the people handling those documents. On the other hand, if you worked with finance to document the workflow, you’d have some important information to help you.

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The growth CIO

You’d know: – How many steps there are in the workflow – Which of those steps require

human oversight – Which of those steps can be automated – What outputs are most important

When a department comes to you with a request, ask these kinds of workflow questions to make it clear what you should be optimizing for and what needs to be taken into account when proposing a solution. (For what it’s worth, the solution to the above issue was a customized workflow that automated manual steps using a multi-function printer and cloud storage.)

By documenting your workflow early on, you give yourself and the business the objective overview necessary to determine which people, processes and technology are essential to make workflows work. It’s a starting point from which you and the business can work together to identify problems and design solutions.

“It’s much easier to add new people to old processes than new processes to old people. Formalize what you are doing to make it easy to onboard new people.”

Ben Horowitz Former CEO, Opsware3

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Actively seek a common understanding with the business

There are many different ways to solve the same problem. And when there’s pressure to solve requests rapidly, it’s easy for IT and the business to start aiming for different outcomes.

Use these tactics to make sure you and the business are on the same page when it comes to solving requests:

a. Start rotating workers in from the business

Joe Lacik, CIO of Aviall Inc., a distributor of aerospace parts and services (that has since been acquired by Boeing) found that rotating workers into IT from business operations was part of the reason why IT at Aviall is so strongly aligned with the business.

2b. Start analyzing requests using

the ‘five whys’ technique Rather than taking requests at face value,

start using this incisive approach to workflow analysis to determine the root cause of the request. Initially created at Toyota, it’s since been used in high growth start-ups, and offers great value for high growth IT teams, too.

“ The more we could get people from the business into IT, the better we could be aligned. We would all have common goals.” Joe Lacik CIO, Aviall4

“ The constant chaos and confrontation of unknowns leads to plenty of fire-fighting. If the overhead of dealing with those unknowns grows proportionally, it can drain an innovative team…” Eric Ries

Author, The Lean Start-up5

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Develop a healthy paranoia about potential security breaches

Unless it’s in a regulated industry like healthcare or legal services, most smaller companies don’t always consider document security a top priority. But this stuff isn’t just for enterprises… As many as 60 percent of targeted cyber-attacks struck small and medium-sized organizations in 2014.6 And worryingly, the per capita cost of a breach for small businesses is significantly higher than it is for larger firms ($1,601 vs. $437).7

Zooming in, a surprising 90 percent of businesses have suffered security breaches because of unsecured printing.8

Top managers agree that the need for effective IT and document security is urgent. But it doesn’t usually feel like a priority until the worst happens. At which point you’re fighting reputation damage, data loss and investigation expenses – all under enormous pressure.

Start defining clear security policies for your company as early as possible and conduct thorough, formalized audits of your print and digital document environments.

The more the company grows, the harder it will be to define baseline security policies and ensure everyone’s following them.

(By the way, if you need any guidance, we’d love to help.)

360% of cyber-attacks struck small and medium size organizations in 2014

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Pull the plug on the old stuff

There are many forces that compel CIOs to stick to the tech they know, even if it compromises their ability to support new business processes.

But the most pernicious of those forces are the urgent quick fixes that create an impossible hairball of spaghetti code and excess hardware.

4During periods of rapid growth, the business’s success hinges on its ability to incorporate new processes and people. So it’s crucial that you optimize for scalability and flexibility above expediency.

Bear in mind that when growth is compromised because of a convoluted, aging technology stack, it doesn’t just slow the business down. It also guarantees IT will be dealing with more requests and more complexity.

“What is lost today every time your company’s IT infrastructure can’t quickly incorporate a new business process that would give you a competitive edge? That’s what a lack of agility can cost you. I call it the agility tax. Robin Johnson, Former CIO, Dell9

When the company is growing, the smartest thing you can do is to free yourself up by removing the outdated legacy technology that takes up so much of your increasingly precious time and resources.

(This is particularly true when it comes to printers. Find out how your print fleet should be helping you.)

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Define what to delegate and what to keep in house

The deluge of new requests that comes flooding in when the company experiences rapid growth is both a burden and an opportunity. It’s a burden because it threatens to consume all your time and resources. But it’s also an opportunity to objectively determine whether your IT operation is spending its time on the right things.

5The key to effective leadership during rapid growth is prioritization. So take the time to define which projects, jobs and IT functions are core to the business and which are not. It helps to collaborate with key stakeholders on the business-side and define parameters that they agree with.

Then, start categorizing requests as they come in to determine how your IT team is spending time on the projects. If you’re struggling to

maintain the service levels the business needs in certain areas, they might be worth outsourcing so your people can focus their energy on areas where they’re happier and more productive.

The good news is that between managed services and automation, the potential is there to reduce the burden on your team. But the smart way to start that process is with an assessment of where your team is spending the bulk of its time and resources.

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“During hard times, the wise CIO makes sure his employees are flexible and trained to take on a variety of tasks. Fast growers, however, say their IT team members are more productive when they are allowed to focus on one job.”Derek Slater CIO.com2

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Most people don’t even realize it, but 40 percent of business activities are document-driven.10

And on average, companies can spend as much as 10 percent of revenue on documents1. So if you’re looking for a way to make a huge impact on the way the organization works, documents are a great place to start.

From automated document workflows to managed print services, the opportunities to save money and even speed up whole processes are both meaningful and plenty. You’d be wise to start looking for ways to optimize your document strategies.

If you need some help getting started, we’d love to help.

Why document management is a great place to start

10% of their revenue

40% of all activities

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Aiming high

When companies are small and IT budgets are smaller, you spend a lot of time fighting fires and keeping the lights on. But when companies are growing, IT can aim higher.

The company’s IT infrastructure needs to stay two steps ahead of the growth trajectory and accommodate the need for new people, new processes and new technologies.

In many ways, this is the part of the growth CIO’s role that’s the most exciting. Because every move you make is of immense strategic importance to the company. And you have an opportunity to make an outsized impact on how well the company copes with the myriad challenges of growth.

So if you’re aiming to build scalable and flexible foundations, aligning your operation with the corporate strategy and focusing your resources on the initiatives your company needs the most, you’ll be well on your way to making growth work.

And nothing could be more exciting than that.

“We had a year where we doubled size from around 400 to 800, and so you end this year where half the company’s been there for less than a year. And all the old ways of doing things are busting at their seams…. It’s a good problem to have.” Ari Gesher Senior Engineer, Palantir Technologies11

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Further reading

Four changes that help when you’re scaling IT.

Small companies often have to make compromises when it comes to document management. But when the company starts growing, the rules change.

Read our slideshare to find out how to help your company avoid the bad habits of the past – and fly in the future. Read it now.

Read the slideshare

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Four smart moves to make growth workHow smarter document strategies help IT during rapid growth

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We’re Xerox.

We believe that without smart IT, companies can’t make growth work.

We help rapidly growing companies find smart ways to manage their printers and documents so their processes can flow better.

Let’s talk.

To find out more, visit xerox.com © 2

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Sources

1 ‘I know what you’re thinking’, Angele Boyd, Industry Analyst IDC2 IT Leadership: Dealing with corporate growth, Derek Slater, CIO.com3 Taking the mystery out of scaling a company, Ben Horowitz, 20104 IT Job rotation rare but critical for business alignment, SearchCIO5 The Five-Whys for Start-ups, Eric Ries, Harvard Business Review6 Internet Security Threat Report, Symantec, April 20157 Global Report of Cost of Cyber Crime, Ponemon Institute, October 20148 The biggest mistakes companies make with data security, Digital Guardian, May, 20159 Why today’s CIO must foster agility, Robin Johnson, CIO.com10 Poor document processes lead to significant business risk, IDC11 Wisdom from hyper-growth companies, Lisa Regan